Muñoz Machado: “Bolívar did not believe in democracy, or in the elections”

«I want to remember the reading of the monumental book of Santiago Muñoz Machado about Cervantes ». Sergio Ramírez Thus began, under the watchful eye of the portrait of the author of Quijote who presides over the auditorium of the Royal Spanish Academy, the conversation with the director of the learned house in the presentation of his new book ‘of democracy in Latin America’ (Taurus). After the presentation of Pilar ReyesEditorial Director of Penguin Random House, Muñoz Machado said that she has written “a defense of representative democracy” in the Hispanic hemisphere, against “the interests of some parties, or the governments of Mr. Maduro and Mr. Ortega, whom I do not even quote because Nicaragua is not a democracy today.”

That defense of democracy emerges from the historical journey from the independence of the American republics, “the century of leaders.” And the twentieth century, “which begins in 1898, date of our ‘disaster’, as we call it, and since then the United States dominated the Caribbean, which made it difficult to consolidate the democracies of the time. And with the Mexican revolution ».

For Muñoz Machado, the leaders of the independence were not Democrats. Despite the Democratic halo that has today, Bolívar did not believe in democracy for America, or in the elections. He was an autocrat. For Ramírez “the leader arises from the enlightened intellectual that is mobilized, more than the sergent.”

The director of the RAE warned that «the worst in Latin America were the applicators of the constitutions that insisted to perpetuate themselves in power. It is not strange that there are populists, people who do nonsense, the important thing is that they perform cleanly to the elections and the adversary and alternation are respected. The key has been the effort in re -legability without measure ».

Ramírez, exiled in Spain, made possible a vital, political and cultural tour of the history of freedoms in Latin America, and recalled that “Hispanic -American literature is the only one that has what is called ‘The novel of the dictator'”.

The conversation was touring the main points of the book and addressed traditional constitutionalism and especially the impact of new constitutionalism, under which the new populists who become autocrats are being hidden for their eagerness to remain in power.

Ramírez recalled that the new Nicaraguan Constitution no longer says that there is a democracy but the two -phase presidency that coordinates all other powers, the dictatorship expressed in the Constitution. «I have not included it in the book because it was published in February of this year and is impressive. Extraordinary things like the Presidency must be in the hands of a man and a woman because there is a marriage under the country. “

The director of the RAE recalled that the dictator has deprived the Nicaraguan Language Academy of legal personality, apart from having forced Sergio Ramírez himself. The writer who lives exiled in Spain recalled that he has also erased him: “I am no longer a lawyer because they canceled the title.”